IRIX® 6.5.16 Update Guide
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IRIX® 6.5.16 Update Guide 1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy. Mountain View, CA 94043-1351 Telephone (650) 960-1980 FAX (650) 961-0595 May 2002 Dear Valued Customer, SGI® is pleased to present the new IRIX® 6.5.16 maintenance and feature release. Starting with IRIX® 6.5, SGI created a new software upgrade strategy, which delivers both the maintenance (6.5.16m) and feature (6.5.16f) streams. This upgrade is part of a family of releases that periodically enhances IRIX 6.5. There are several benefits to this release strategy: it provides periodic fixes to IRIX, it assists in managing upgrades, and it supports all platforms. Additional information on this strategy and how it affects you is included in the updated Installation Instructions manual contained in this package. If you need assistance, please visit the Supportfolio™ Online Web site at http://support.sgi.com or contact your local support provider. In conjunction with the release of IRIX® 6.5.15, SGI added to the existing life cycle management categories the Limited Support Mode that customizes services we deliver to our users. This new support mode is targeted for open source products. We now offer eight (8) modes of 2 service for software supported by SGI : Active, Maintenance, Limited, Legacy, Courtesy, Divested, Retired, and Expired. Active Mode is our highest level of service. It applies to products that are being actively developed and maintained and are orderable through general distribution. Software fixes for all levels of problems can be expected. Maintenance Mode software is maintained and is still an important part of our product mix. No new functionality is added to products in this support mode. Functional fixes for severe problems are generally available. Products in this support mode category are still orderable through general distribution. Software usually stays in this category about 18 months before being moved to a mode of lesser support. Limited Mode is a restricted level of service developed mainly for products developed and maintained by open source organizations and that are distributed by SGI. Legacy Mode software generally runs on out-of-production operating system versions or system platforms that are no longer in active development or maintained. These products are usually distributed with limited availability. New support contracts may be offered and renewed. Services provided with Legacy Mode are limited to providing existing fixes and “workarounds” for reported problems. IRIX® 6.2, IRIX® 6.3, and IRIX® 6.4 operating system revisions are examples of major operating system releases that are supported in this category. 3 Courtesy Mode software is not officially part of the software support offerings. Courtesy mode software is not covered by software support contracts, and call center support is not available. An e-mail alias may be provided to facilitate customer communications and to address any technical questions. Response times will vary according to availability of resources. The e-mail alias may be terminated at any time without advance notice. IRIS Showcase™ and Cosmo Worlds™ are examples of products with Courtesy Mode support. Divested Mode software has been turned over to a third party who assumes all responsibility for support. SGI no longer distributes these products. Calls received at the SGI Call Center for support on divested products will be redirected to the applicable third party. CA Unicenter® TNG and Syntax TAS™ are examples of divested products. Retired Mode provides restricted support for older software products which are no longer generally distributed by SGI. This level of support has severe limitations on portability to new platforms. Availability of support at this level is limited to existing customers with whom we have existing contractual obligations. This is the final stage before a product is completely removed from the SGI product set. Expired Mode software products have reached the end of their useful life. These products are not supported or distributed in any form by SGI. Examples are: IRIX® 5.3, IRIXPro™, and Proconf. 4 The Web page at http://support.sgi.com/irix/news/index.html#swmodes contains a link to a Web page where the eight software support modes are described in more detail. This Web page also contains links to the latest customer letters, which provide a list of the various software products that have changed support modes. We thank you for your continued commitment to SGI. Terry Oberdank Vice President, Global Services SGI 5 Welcome to your SGI IRIX 6.5.16 update. This booklet contains: • A list of key features in IRIX 6.5.16 • A list of CDs contained in the IRIX 6.5.16 update kit • A guide to SGI Web sites 6 IRIX 6.5.16 Key New Features The following changes have been incorporated into the core IRIX 6.5.16 overlay CDs and the Applications CD. New Software Features - Feature Stream Only Filesystems • New option for XVM show command For the IRIX 6.5.16f release, the -extend option has been added to the XVM show command. Specifying this option will display additional information about physvols, slices, stripes and foreign disks than the show command alone. The XVM Volume Manager Administrator’s Guide and the XVM help screens have been updated with examples that use this option. • CXFS new features For IRIX 6.5.16f, CXFS features include the following: – Support for multiple operating system (multiOS) clients, such as Solaris nodes and Windows NT nodes. The CXFS GUI and cmgr(1M) command now allow you to specify the operating system for a given node. 7 – I/O fencing, which allows a problem node to be isolated from the storage area network (SAN) so that it cannot corrupt data in the shared CXFS filesystem; this is required for Solaris nodes and Windows NT nodes. A Brocade switch is required to support I/O fencing. – Support for a two-node CXFS cluster running with FailSafe and an L1 controller on Origin 300 and Origin 3200 systems. See the CXFS Software Installation and Administration Guide for more information. • CXFS upgrade: filesystem definitions The structure of the CXFS filesystem configuration was changed with the release of IRIX 6.5.13f. Backward compatibility with earlier versions is no longer maintained as of IRIX 6.5.14f, since all nodes in the cluster must be running the same or adjacent releases. – If you are upgrading from 6.5.13f to 6.5.14f or later, there is no further impact. – If you are upgrading from 6.5.12f or earlier, you must perform a one-time manual conversion of your CXFS filesystem definitions. See the CXFS Software Installation and Administration Guide for more information. • CXFS upgrade: cluster nodes For CXFS customers, if you install IRIX 6.5.16f including sysadm_base on a cluster node where the 6.5.13f or earlier version 8 of CXFS is installed, you will need to upgrade to the 6.5.16f version CXFS (sysadm_cxfs) and install 6.5.16f sysadm_cluster. System Performance and Tuning • New joblimitsign kernel tunable parameters group The IRIX 6.5.16 release adds the joblimitsign group of kernel tunables that can be used to specify that specific job limit resource accumulation and enforcement should be ignored by the kernel. Setting the kernel tunable value to 1 indicates the specific limit should be ignored. Setting the value to 0 will re-enable the limit for newly created jobs. The following kernel tunable parameters have been added: – jlimit_cpu_ign parameter The jlimit_cpu_ign parameter specifies that the accumulation and enforcement of CPU time limits for jobs should be ignored. – jlimit_data_ign parameter The jlimit_data_ign parameter specifies that the accumulation and enforcement of data memory limits for jobs should be ignored. – jlimit_nofile_ign parameter The jlimit_nofile_ign parameter specifies that the accumulation and enforcement of limits for the number of open files in jobs should be ignored. 9 – jlimit_numproc_ign parameter The jlimit_numproc_ign parameter specifies that the accumulation and enforcement of limits for the number of processes in jobs should be ignored. – jlimit_pmem_ign parameter The jlimit_pmem_ign parameter specifies that the accumulation and enforcement of physical memory limits for jobs should be ignored. – jlimit_pthread_ign parameter The jlimit_pthread_ign parameter specifies that the accumulation and enforcement of limits for the number of pthreads should be ignored. – jlimit_rss_ign parameter The jlimit_rss_ign parameter specifies that the accumulation and enforcement of resident set size (RSS) memory limits for jobs should be ignored. – jlimit_vmem_ign parameter The jlimit_vmem_ign parameter specifies that the accumulation and enforcement of virtual memory limits for jobs should be ignored. For more information on kernel tunable parameters, see the setjusage(2) entry in Appendix A in IRIX Admin: Resource Administration. 10 – New setjusage system call The setjusage system call is used to update resource usage for jobs in the kernel. The system call can only be used to update usage information if the limit accumulation and enforcement for the specified resource is being ignored. This function can be used by sites to implement a site-specific solution for resource accumulation and enforcement. Using this system call allows the various job limit status commands to display usage values as reported from the site-specific implementation. For more information, see the setjusage(2) man page and the setjusage(2) entry in Appendix A in IRIX Admin: Resource Administration. Comprehensive System Accounting (CSA) • Change to csa.conf file The IRIX 6.5.16 release removes the ACCT_FS parameter in the /etc/csa.conf file. The MIN_BLKS parameter now determines the minimum number of free 1K blocks needed on the file system on which the /var/adm/acct directory resides. The default is 2000. To ensure that the MIN_BLKS variable has been set correctly, check the value in the /etc/csa.conf configuration file. For more information, see Chapter 5, “Comprehensive System Accounting”, in IRIX Admin: Resource Administration.